Daenys the Dreamer, the woman who foresaw the Doom of Valyria

When Daenys was still a maiden she had a powerful prophetic dream, showing the destruction of Valyria by fire.

Daemon seeing his descendant daenerys Targaryen reviving the magic and turning the essos policy upside down, with 3 dragonlings, and some 2-4% Targaryen blood 👁️👄👁️.

to be fair, daenerys basically jumpstarted the valyrian magic by performing the whole blood-and-fire-sacrifice-thing. like, think of the blood magic as a battery that's constantly powering a phone (ability to claim dragons). it runs out over time and needs to be recharged, otherwise you can't use the phone (can't claim dragons). back in old valyria, people were doing these sacrifices on the daily, it was literally built on the foundation of slavery forcing people to mine inside of volcanoes, aka burning thousands of sacrifices on the daily, apprently so many that "the mind simply cannot comprehend the number." like that's pretty damn on the nose, plus it's a direct continuation of grrm's narrative for the targaryens. so the battery was constantly being recharged.

but then the doom happened. and the remaining valyrian dragon riders lost the knowledge of how to recharge the battery. there's no real mention from here on out of any such sacrifices or rituals occurring. when the magic began to dwindle over time, there was nothing being done to replenish it. visenya might have dabbled in some sorcery, but there's no mention of anything like this.

until daenerys.

without anyone teaching her how, she performs the exact type of ritual that hasn't been properly done since pre-doom. she quite literally revives the magic- she is the first targaryen in westerosi history to revive the magic (yet another way in which she is distinguished from all of her ancestors).

tldr: i do think daemon would be absolutely horrified if he found out about daenerys. but not because he'd be disgusted by her diluted blood or anything. remember, his entire belief system is centered around keeping magic in the family, that's the entire reason he cares about blood. he'd actually be ecstatic to find a new, much easier and more reliable way of staying in power.

so i think daemon would be like "so you mean the WHOLE TIME we could have just been burning people alive with some magic mumbo jumbo instead of stressing about wrangling our family tree into a pretzel???? it could've been THAT easy all along???? someone round up like 100 people for me right now, everyone get in line, and we'll all take turns"

Could YOU survive the DOOM of Valyria? 🎮🌋

I know the Century of Blood is named as such mostly because of the power vacuum which was created following the downfall of Valyria, but considering the Doom is hypothesized to be the explosion of the Fourteen Flames (whether brought about by magic or not), a volcanic eruption of that level would absolutely cause worldwide famine due to the levels of volcanic ash and gases entering the atmosphere and obscuring the sun, lowering overall atmosphere temperatures and preventing harvests from coming to fruition

So realistically, the Century of Blood should have contained several long hard winters with utterly ruinous famines, especially in places like the North… but imo GRRM either overlooks this aspect of science (which is fair, he’s not a scientist)… or I wonder if this is a subtle form of proof that it wasn’t a *volcanic* eruption necessarily which caused the Doom, but an otherwise large scale explosion brought on by magic used by the Dragonlords, and there never was a volcanic eruption

It wouldn’t really explain the peninsula shattering, which is why I lean toward the theory that GRRM just kinda overlooked the whole famine thing for the more obvious and dramatic power vacuums which occur after empires collapse. But it could be intentional nonetheless

A Game of Thrones, Tyrion II

From there the skulls ranged upward in size to the three great monsters of song and story, the dragons that Aegon Targaryen and his sisters had unleashed on the Seven Kingdoms of old.

They had been given the names of gods: Balerion, Meraxes, Vhagar.

Tyrion had stood between their gaping jaws, wordless and awed.

You could have ridden a horse down Vhagar’s gullet, although you would not have ridden it out again.

Meraxes was even bigger.

And the greatest of them, Balerion, the Black Dread, could have swallowed an aurochs whole, or even one of the hairy mammoths said to roam the cold wastes beyond the Port of Ibben.

Tyrion stood in that dank cellar for a long time, staring at Balerion’s huge, empty-eyed skull until his torch burned low, trying to grasp the size of the living animal, to imagine how it must have looked when it spread its great black wings and swept across the skies, breathing fire.

Balerion: Bitches be like- I know a spot... and they take you to burning ruins of your ancestors' homeland riddled with monsters and exotic diseases.

Balerion: It's me. I'm bitches...

The best thing about the House of the Dragon series is that they add in new canon information from George himself. The best part was confirming of course the Aegon Conquest theory and also some lore for Valyria... For many years people would guess at how many dragons the Valyrian Free Hold owned. Now it so happens the show has confirmed it was minimally 1000 dragons🐉. Talk about overkill 😂.. Before this the only thing we could go off was that about 300 hundred dragons were sent to finish off the Rhoynar.. And that they did💀💀..What alot of Show only Viewers may not realize or remember is that the Targaryens were only 1/40 DragonLord families. It's also stated I believe that they were probably bottom 5-10 of all families 😭😭. Imagine how much more impressive the other families were. Here we have Aegon and 3 simple dragons claiming Westeros(R.I.P Meraxes🙏) .. And their ancestors had over 100x that amount..It is known as hat Aenor Targaryen only came to dragonstone with 5 dragons (1 which was Balerion). From that time till Aegon Conquest the other 4 would die somehow and Meraxes/Vhagar would be born from a set of eggs.. Just doing a simple amount of math we can deduce logically if you divide 1000 dragons by 40 families it would average out to about 25 per family. But as I just mentioned Aenor who family was lower ranking amongst the he dragon lord only had 5 dragons. So I'm thinking there probably were some families with at least 100 dragons strictly for their family 😳..

Imagine if they survived the doom.. Whitewalkers would've been toast easily 😂💯

Definitely need a short 1-3 season show on Valyria 🤔🙏🙏🤔. I would argue it should be animated since I think cgi work for a thousand dragons would be more $$$ then a standard all around animated show. They should either make it Avatar the Last Airbender style or Clone Wars Clay animation style in my opinion

Hi!

Could you write some content regarding the Valyrian post of Archon (I always took it be the equivalent of a Roman Consul), specifically the election, the rituals, etc.

This is a really interesting question! I've sort of thought about Valyrian governance for my Old Valyria AU, when we ruled the heavens, but not super in-depth. I'm also not a politics person, I try my hardest for story purposes but it's not got my greatest interest and there are many other bloggers who have talked at length about political systems in ASOIAF. But here's what I'm thinking. What we do know about archons is this:

"Archons were provisionally elected by the lords freeholder of Valyria. Often dragonriders, archons from Valyria oversaw colonial cities and towns of the Valyrian Freehold, with the exceptions of the self-ruling Free Cities." - A Wiki of Ice and Fire, Archons

The lords freeholder sometimes elected archons from their own number, to help lead Valyria for a limited time. -A Wiki of Ice and Fire, Lords freeholder

So to me it seems like, in the colonies, archons function like governors, while in the capital, the archon of Valyria functioned more like a Roman dictator. Because it's me, I'll bring up some High Valyrian roots, too- the word for archon, judlio, comes from judligon, to respond or answer, and the agent suffix. So literally, "responder" or "answerer". It makes me think of both "being answerable to" and "being answerable for". So, yes, there's absolute power, but also, that there is some accountability. At least that's the ideal. Obviously, etymology does not equal reality, but like the Romans, the Valyrians were probably very proud of their veneer of democracy, while still protecting their own elitism.

I'd imagine that for both, there would be a system of nomination and confirmation. Perhaps for nomination, there could be a Goblet of Fire situation, putting a name in through magical means- which would eliminate the people who do not have access to that sort of magic, though the Valyrians could point out that no one was blocking someone else from putting their name in. For term limits, let's say the colonial archons would rule for fourteen years, that's an important number to the Valyrians. But the Archon of Valyria would have their term limit set at their nomination, to address the particular situation.

Technically, any freeholder- a freeborn landowner- would be able to vote, but it's plainly obvious that the lords freeholders from the Forty Families were the ones actually in charge, and the dragonlords especially. I'm thinking that these votes were held publically, to prevent any fraud, with the individual voters attesting to their vote. Perhaps this would happen on top of one of those topless towers, so everyone can get a good view of those dragons as they're voting. There's also something of a flex to have all those regular freeholders climbing up all those steps- which is its own filtering system- and then at the top all those dragonlords can get dropped off now problem.

Now for the rituals. As with all Valyrian magic, they definitely involve some fire and blood. In my headcanon, magical rituals are best done with the perpetrator's own blood, and that letting the injury heal naturally is the way to make it bind. I got this idea from Daemyra's Valyrian marriage ceremony in the show cutting their hands and their lips, which, ouch. But a scar in the lip would seem like an obvious marker of marriage to me. In my own AU, the Hearthkeepers, priest-mages who hold back the Fourteen Flames, are cut on their wrists to bind their positions, and for a public position like archon, I think they would like the scar to also be in a very visible location, perhaps on the face like with marriage or even with something like a piercing. I've seen some pretty cool headcanons of what people think up for Valyrian jewelry that I think would fit here.

To prevent someone holding onto their position for longer than their allotted time, I would like to imagine that there was some form of investment ritual that would bind them to the oath to give up power. Yes, there was a lot of jockeying for power, but I can't think that they wouldn't have at least some checks and balances to assure that dragons aren't dancing every time there's some kind of transition of power. Thus, in the same vein, I would imagine that ritual would also add in some kind of protection against assassination, perhaps some sort of magical killing backlash against the attacker and the person responsible. That last bit would be important, though you know those Valyrians would be trying to dodge around it.

That's all I've got for now. Thanks for the ask!

AtlantisFell has a damn right point

Looking at the content we know about the skin colours of Essos: most of the more southern regions aren't 'white' the rhoynar, the people of old ghis/slavers bay, the dothraki have darker skin tones. Entirely possible a common Valyrians married people from those regions, travel wasnt hard with the dragon made roads (yes Valyria went to war with the Rhoynar and Ghis but those marriages can predate those wars).

The confirmed 'white' people? Andals and First Men, Westerosi people/people of Northern Essos origin (okay the first men came via the arm of dorne but the families we know are first men are white). The people of Lys, descended from dragonlords not Valyrians.

Also: Black Velaryons doesnt have to be something dating back to the freehold. Post doom a Velaryon could have sailed south and fallen for a summer islander, married and started the history of Velaryons being black. We don't have a full Velaryon family tree. Heck that could have happened pre doom. (seen that idea thrown around by some theorists to give an in world explanation)

All of this. It's actually insane to think that an entire country of people were one skin color. We don't even know the skin color of those indigenous to Old Valyria, we just know that the dragonlords were predominantly white with silver hair and purple eyes distinguishing them in Essos. The non-dragonlord noble families could've looked like anything. Asians and Africans indigenous to the lands don't share the same features, they look different depending on region. Japan's and Russia's indigenous people don't even look like the majority.

Black Valyrians can exist and they do exist in the show now with GRRM approval, without breaking canon besides a few skin tone changes.

Something I’m so curious about is the extent to which R’hllor worshipers (obviously in the past few centuries) see and/or have seen the Doom as R’hllor’s divine judgement on Valyria. There’s the slightest suggestion of this in TWOIAF - Yandel, speculating on various scholarly explanations for the Doom, mentioning that “[o]there speak of the priests of R'hllor calling down the fire of their god in queer rituals” - but I have to think this connection has been made by at least some R’hllor worshipers throughout recent history.

After all, it’s easy to see what in the Doom could be taken as evidence by the R’hllorite faith. If R’hllor is the “God of Flame and Shadow” whose entire faith hinges and depends on fire, how could the terrible simultaneous eruption of the Fourteen Flames be interpreted by R’hllor’s faithful ones except the wrath of their fiery god? The Doom’s “fiery fountains spew[ing] molten rock” and “ash and smoke and fire so hot and hungry that even the dragons in the sky were engulfed and consumed” likewise very strongly suggest (again, to those inclined to see such a connection) the hand of a great and powerful fire god, using the power of flames to bring destruction on the Valyrians and all their works. This is an apocalypse of flame and heat (even to the accompanying “boiling” lakes and seas), one which might seem to have been obviously caused by a god who works in fire

And so you could see how the post-Doom R’hllorite theology might write itself here. R’hllor, in his munificence, gave the first Valyrians his promised land - literally, the “Lands of the Long Summer”, the same sort of verbiage employed by Benerro to describe the bliss promised following the final defeat of the Great Other - and dragons, those beasts that as “fire made flesh” best embody R’hllor himself, in order to spread the good word of R’hllor across Essos. But the Valyrians, in their pride and arrogance, turned away from their divine benefactor: instead of abasing themselves as R’hllor’s humble slaves, they made others into their slaves, for the extension of the temporal power R’hllor had provided (even corrupting the dragons in using for the sake of imperial dominion instead of the performance of R’hllor’s will); instead of worshiping only R’hllor, they arrogated to themselves the mantle of divinity, “believing themselves to be more powerful than any god or goddess”. So R’hllor, in the classic style of a vengeful god, smote the Valyrians, eliminating his former chosen people (and even the dragons) so thoroughly to teach the world that he was the one true god, who would not be defied or mocked even by those he had once blessed.

In turn, this may explain why the faith of R’hllor is so appealing to enslaved people across Essos, especially Volantis. If R’hllorism teaches that the sin of Valyria, punished by the Lord of Light, was to some extent slavery - perhaps not as an evil in itself, given the faith’s own participation in slavery (and that’s a separate point of criticism of R’hllorism outside the scope of this post), but as, perhaps, the assumption of slaveholding which should belong only to the god himself - then it might follow that any state which allows a similar sin to flourish will eventually suffer the same fate. How easy is it for R’hllor worshipers to see Volantis, especially, as a new Valyria, with its dragonless lords worshiping those same heretical Valyrian gods and enslaving so many of R’hllor’s faithful ones - and if a Doom came to Valyria by R’hllor’s hand, then Volantis is surely doomed as well to feel R’hllor’s divine wrath. Just as R’hllor once made his will known in Valyria through fiery destruction, so he will again in Volantis, so Benerro has prophesied, using Daenerys and her dragons as his instrument; as R’hllor had once destroyed the dragons which the Valyrians had used to claim a false godhood, so R’hllor, in this theology, will redeem the world through a Valyrian descendant and her dragon, just doing his will instead.

The World Of Ice & Fire: Ten Thousand Ships (Revised 12/13/22)

Warning, Spoilers Ahead…

   Garin’s forces have been annihilated by the Valyrians. Nymeria, the princess of Ny Sar, knew she needed to leave before the Valyrians arrived or her city would suffer the same fate.

Ny Sar no longer had any fighting men as they had left and died with Garin. Nymeria gathered all the remaining ships – large and small. Legends state the fleet consisted of 10,000 ships but there was no accurate count.

Nymeria led the fleet down the Rhoyne, “past ruined and smoking towns and fields of the dead, through waters choked with bloated, floating corpses.” Nymeria and her fleet used an older channel of the Rhoyne and emerged into the Summer Sea.

The fleet consisted of river crafts, skiffs, poleboats, trading galleys, fishing boats, pleasure barges, and rafts. Most weren’t seaworthy and were crammed full of women, children, and old men.

Many ships were lost in the voyage. Some sank in storms. Others turned back only to be captured and enslaved by the Valyrians. Others fell behind and were never seen again.

Nymeria’s fleet first arrived in the Basilisk Isles only to battle the corsair kings of Ax Isle, Talon, and the Howling Mountain. Nymeria lost twoscore ships and hundreds of Rhoynar were carried off into slavery.

The corsairs offered Nymeria a deal: The Rhoynar would be allowed to settle on the Isle of Toads if they gave up their boats and sent each king thirty virgin girls and pretty boys yearly as tribute. Nymeria refused and took her fleet to sea again.

Nymeria’s next stop was “the steaming jungles of Sothoryos”. “Some settled on Basilisk Point, others beside the glistening green waters of the Zamoyos, amongst quicksands, crocodiles, and rotting, half-drowned trees. Princess Nymeria herself remained with the ships at Zamettar, a Ghiscari colony abandoned for a thousand years, whilst others made their way upriver to cyclopean ruins of Yean, haunt of ghouls and spiders.”

Sothoryos has a few benefits – gold, gems, rare woods, exotic pelts, queer fruits, strange spices – but the Rhoynar did not flourish. The heat was sullen and oppressive. The stinging flies brought one disease after the other: green fever, the dancing plague, blood boils, weeping sores, and sweetrot. The Zamoyos River was infested with carnivorous flesh, and “tiny worms that laid their eggs in the flesh of swimmers”.

The towns on Basilisk Point were raided by slavers, the populations either killed or carried off by the slavers. Yeen suffered attacks from the “brindled ghouls of the jungle deeps”.

Most of the afflictions are typical of tropical areas – especially for people unused to the climate. The dancing plague intrigues me – was it like the dancing plague of Europe? And the ghouls – are they actual supernatural creatures or simply strange animals?  

The Rhoynar lasted a year in Sothoryos before they reached their breaking point. One day a boat from Zamettar arrived at Yeen to find that every member of the town had vanished without a trace. Shades of Roanoke? Despite the mystery surrounding Roanoke, the most likely theory is the citizens of Roanoke assimilated with a nearby native tribe to avoid death by starvation. Where did the natives of Yeen go? Were they taken by a mass ghoul attack and turned into yum-yums? Did slavers abduct the entire population? Did they decide to ditch the rest of the Rhoynar and head out to sea?

Nymeria summoned her remaining people and returned to the sea.  They spent three years sailing the southern seas.

They landed on Naath, the Isle of Butterflies. The natives were a peaceful people who welcomed the newcomers. The Naath gods, however, were all “nope” and struck down the Rhoynar with a “nameless mortal illness”. Back to the ships!

The Rhoynar next settled on an “uninhabited rock off the eastern shore of Walano”, which became known as the Isle of Women. Unfortunately, the stony soil yielded little food, and many died from starvation.

By this point, the Rhoynar were desperate and frustrated. Nymeria commanded a return to the boats and a portion of the group decided to follow Druselka, a priestess who felt Mother Rhoyne was calling her children home. Druselka and her followers returned to Rhoyne only to encounter the Valyrians. They were hunted down, slain, or enslaved.

Nymeria decided to sail towards Westeros.

There is a possibility of HBO ordering a Ten Thousand Ships series based on Nymeria’s travels.  The fans’ reception to the idea seems lukewarm. I admit it’s not the highest spot on my list of potential adaptations but here are my benefits of a potential show:

·         The demonstration of the entitlement of the destruction fueled Valyrian Freehold. The series should begin with the final destruction of the Rhoynar. There is a perception that Valyria was a mythical place of wonder. The reality is it was an empire based on slavery, blood magic, colonization, destruction, and genocide that annihilated the actual mythical place of wonder. Dany’s (poorly written) show finale in King’s Landing is a typical Valyrian response to defiance: destroy everything in sight, damn the innocents caught in the crossfire. “Fire and Blood” is more than the Targaryen house words – it’s a Valyrian way of life.

·         An exploration of Nymeria beyond “mythical warrior woman”.  What was the reality behind the legend?

·         Pirate battles!

·         The horrors of Sothoryos!

·         Naath. Just to see show-only fans go “Wait, wasn’t that where Grey Worm and the Unsullied went to?”

·         I assume the last season of the show would be Nymeria’s arriving in Dorne and marrying Mors Martell.  Show--fans will finally have a non-irritating Dornish storyline.

Up next, Nymeria and company arrive in Dorne.

Something Princess Rhaenyra would wear, pt 2/?

Elie Saab Fall 2013

Valyria's cultural legacy isn't turning Essos into a slave culture. Old Ghis was a slave culture thousands of years before the Valarians came along. (Also insert point about Historical Materialism here 'cause I've got to relate things to my brand occasionally)

If anything, Valyria's cultural legacy is religious tolerance in much of Essos. Like obviously Valyria sucked and Valyrian slavery sucked but if there's one impact of their rule that could have been different, it's probably their attitude to other religions.

Talking about Sylvenna Sand, imagine obsessively pontificating about how much the racists and reactionaries Targaryens oppress Dorne and the smallfolk while stanning the Greens, the side that hangs Sylvenna Sand, a revolutionary lowborn Dornish lesbian and twenty-seven other members of Gaemon Palehair’s “court” (all lowborn).

And no, Green stans can’t claim Gaemon Palehair. He literally decreed that “girls should henceforth be equal with boys in matter of inheritance.” Gaemon and Sylvenna would have supported Rhaenyra.

There absolutely is a racial element to the conquest of Dorne that I think should be addressed more in fandom tbh. It’s made pretty clear by GRRM, with some of our first introductions to any Dornish characters via Elia Martell and Rhaenys III Targaryen, whom was rejected by Aerys II Targaryen for ‘smelling Dornish.’ This is a racialized insult, so I absolutely believe there is a racial element to the Dornish conquest. Dorne is also in part inspired by elements of Palestinian culture, as well as Spanish and Welsh cultures. So it’s not incorrect to say that the Dornish are people of color. Palestine in particular is a nation which has been fighting their own war against colonization by Israeli settlers for the 70 years. I don’t think it was an accident that GRRM used this nation in particular for inspiration. So it isn’t incorrect to say that Dorne was oppressed by the Targaryens, especially considering Aegon, Visenya, and Rhaenys burned all the major Dornish cities to the ground multiple times over to such an extent that it’s shown that Dorne is still financially impacted by the destruction of their lands in present ASOIAF timeline.

I’ve noticed a certain subset of Targaryen fans that like to ignore all of this in order to elevate House Targaryen to ‘perfect royals’ status. That is NOT what I believe at all. I love Daenerys, but I think House Targaryen as a whole was your average monarchy—which is to say founded on imperialist violence and upheld through oppression.

All of that being said, you’re right that IF Lady Alyssa and Sylvenna Sand weren’t advocating for an end to the monarchy, they would’ve supported Rhaenyra at least in principle according to her being firstborn. That being said I’m pretty sure Sylvenna Sand was in the process of writing the Westerosi version of the Communist Manifesto when she was executed /j

A Game of Thrones, Daenerys I

Daenerys said nothing.

She had always assumed that she would wed Viserys when she came of age.

For centuries the Targaryens had married brother to sister, since Aegon the Conqueror had taken his sisters to bride. The line must be kept pure, Viserys had told her a thousand times; theirs was the kingsblood, the golden blood of old Valyria, the blood of the dragon.

Dragons did not mate with the beasts of the field, and Targaryens did not mingle their blood with that of lesser men.

Yet now Viserys schemed to sell her to a stranger, a barbarian.

We have told the world that Princess Aerea died of a fever, and that is broadly true, but it was a fever such as I have never seen before and hope never to see again. The girl was burning. Her skin was flushed and red and when I laid my hand upon her brow to learn how hot she was, it was as if I had thrust it into a pot of boiling oil. There was scarce an ounce of flesh upon her bones, so gaunt and starved did she appear, but we could observe certain…swellings inside her, as her skin bulged out and then sunk down again, as if…no, not as if, for this was the truth of it…there were things inside her, living things, moving and twisting, mayhaps searching for a way out, and giving her such pain that even the milk of the poppy gave her no surcease. We told the king, as we must surely tell her mother, that Aerea never spoke, but that is a lie. I pray that I shall soon forget some of the things she whispered through her cracked and bleeding lips. I cannot forget how oft she begged for death.  All the maester’s arts were powerless against her fever, if indeed we can call such a horror by such a commonplace name. The simplest way to say it is that the poor child was cooking from within. Her flesh grew darker and darker and then began to crack, until her skin resembled nothing so much, Seven save me, as pork cracklings. Thin tendrils of smoke issued from her mouth, her nose, even, most obscenely, from her nether lips. By then she had ceased to speak, though the things within her continued to move. Her very eyes cooked within her skull and finally burst, like two eggs left in a pot of boiling water for too long.  I thought that was the most hideous thing that I should ever see, but I was quickly disabused of the notion, for a worse horror was awaiting me. That came when Benifer and I lowered the poor child into a tub and covered her with ice. The shock of that immersion stopped her heart at once, I tell myself…if so, that was a mercy, for that was when the things inside her came out… The things…Mother have mercy, I do not know how to speak of them…they were…worms with faces…snakes with hands…twisting, slimy, unspeakable things that seemed to writhe and pulse and squirm as they came bursting from her flesh. Some were no bigger than my little finger, but one at least was as long as my arm…oh, Warrior protect me, the sounds they made… They died, though. I must remember that, cling to that. Whatever they might have been, they were creatures of heat and fire, and they did not love the ice, oh no. One after another they thrashed and writhed and died before my eyes, thank the Seven. I will not presume to give them names…they were horrors. ... The Valyrians were more than dragonlords. They practiced blood magic and other dark arts as well, delving deep into the earth for secrets best left buried and twisting the flesh of beasts and men to fashion monstrous and unnatural chimeras. For these sins the gods in their wroth struck them down. Valyria is accursed, all men agree, and even the boldest sailor steers well clear of its smoking bones…but we would be mistaken to believe that nothing lives there now. The things we found inside Aerea Targaryen live there now, I would submit…along with such other horrors as we cannot even begin to imagine. I have written here at length of how the princess died, but there is something else, something even more frightening, that requires mention:  Balerion had wounds as well. That enormous beast, the Black Dread, the most fearsome dragon ever to soar through the skies of Westeros, returned to King’s Landing with half-healed scars that no man recalled ever having seen before, and a jagged rent down his left side almost nine feet long, a gaping red wound from which his blood still dripped, hot and smoking.

Fire and Blood (George R. R. Martin)

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the horrors the world of Ice and Fire offers. It’s not only Ice corpses, but fiery worms that will cook you from the inside!